Atlantis is the last of three remaining operational orbiters in NASA's Space Shuttle fleet. In February 2011, Space Shuttle Discovery was the first of the three to launch on its final mission after nearly 30 years of space travel. Then, in April 2011, Space Shuttle Endeavour was set to launch, but was delayed due to a broken set of heaters. It took off on its final mission in mid May instead.

Now, NASA's Space Shuttle fleet will be three-for-three as Atlantis blasts into orbit for its last mission as well.

Space Shuttle Atlantis first flew into space on mission STS-51-J in October 1985. It has completed 32 missions, spent 293 days in space, carried 191 crews and has traveled 120,650,907 miles. Atlantis is the only orbiter that cannot draw power from the International Space Station while docked there. Instead, it must provide its own power for fuel cells.

Today marks Atlantis' 33rd and final mission, STS-135. It will be a 12-day mission to the International Space Station with the purpose of delivering supplies and spare parts, which will be contained in the Raffaello multipurpose logistics module.

"That is the most beautiful vehicle we've had to fly in space, ever, and it's going to be a long time until you see a vehicle roll out to the pad that looks as beautiful as that," said Walheim. "How can you beat that? An airplane on the side of a rocket. It's absolutely stunning."

Space shuttle Atlantis took off at 11:29 a.m. ET from Launch Pad 39A at the Kennedy Space Center. While some reports noted that weather could be obstacle possibly causing a delay, the astronauts started boarding Atlantis around 8:00 a.m. and the hatch was closed around 9:21 a.m. for flight.

Reports have estimated that the crowd gathered in the area to see the launch ranged from 500,000 to 1 million people.

Comments

Threshold

Username

Password

remember me

This article is over a month old, voting and posting comments is disabled

As was the Challenger a decision from politicians. We can definitely agree politicians have a way of screwing things up. But someone has to be the leader and make choices I suppose.

The shuttle has also flown a lot more flights than Soyuz, now hasn't it? Once more, the only true shuttle accident was Columbia, that shows it has a great record. And, considering how we are basing these failure rate statistics, Apollo 1 would count as a loss, so that wasn't 100% either.

No, it is that simple. Space is dangerous, space is harsh, space is hard. But the shuttle is as safe as it gets (with 70's and 80's tech) for the amount of crew and cargo it carries and the capabilities it has (check out that robotic manipulation arm).

In any event, the shuttle isn't remotely as dangerous as you were unfoundedly trying to claim.

Challenger was NOT a decision from the politicians. Challenger WAS a decision from a management team that forgot what they and their predecessors had previously agreed to. The requirements for the SRBs were for them to be able to work properly in the temperatures experienced that day. During qualification tests for those boosters, there were no readily available days in Utah when the temperature reached that level AND the booster test article was ready to go. Management agreed to accept the design without doing that testing in order to save money.

In the review for the Challenger flight, questions were raised as to the safety of launching in that temperature. NASA management pulled out the booster specs and asked the contractor if their product met its requirements. The contractor said yes, without consulting their engineering team or the NASA booster engineering team. As far as I can tell, NONE of the people in the room were aware of the lack of qualification testing at that temperature range. And the decision was made IN THAT ROOM. The people there were NOT politicians.

quote: NASA management pulled out the booster specs and asked the contractor if their product met its requirements. The contractor said yes, without consulting their engineering team or the NASA booster engineering team. ....As far as I can tell, NONE of the people in the room were aware of the lack of qualification testing..... And the decision was made IN THAT ROOM. The people there were NOT politicians.

So.... a decision was made without consulting the engineering groups who knew the system. So yes it was a decision from politicians from within the NASA bureaucracy.

You bring up the word "management" several times, just who do you think goes into management?

You say that none of the people in the room were aware of the lack of testing, but did they ask the engineering groups? NO, NASA had engineers on staff that get paid to look at failure analysis yet when there was a question, no one consulted them.... sounds like a politician to me.